


Exquisite Corpse

by Ayulsa (execharmonious)



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Gen, Magic, TEAM SHIVA, magic!meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/execharmonious/pseuds/Ayulsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Zozo, the party learns about Magicite. Celes watches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exquisite Corpse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stealth_Noodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/gifts).



> For the prompt of "one or more party members testing out a piece of Magicite".

She watches all of them, their every motion, as they share the Magicite amongst themselves and try to figure it out. She notes their reactions as, each in turn, they take or exchange a piece of it and carry it with them for a time, warm and pulsating in a pocket or a belt-bag or a pouch around the neck. She watches how it changes them, and how it doesn't. She watches how long they hold on.

Sabin is the one who impresses her first, catching her offguard with his insight. "It's like it opened up a new space inside of me," he says, pointing to somewhere in between his ribcage and his gut. "Something I could never quite reach before, not like this, but I think... no, I know I've seen it. When I meditated, when I trained, there was always something asleep there. And now it's like... it just woke up." She nods, and mentally notes to herself that the ascetic disciplines of old have some merit in them.

Locke stares intently into each piece by their campfire, fingers stroking its cracks and blemishes as if he can coax the knowledge from it that way. Just another treasure to him, she thinks at first, to be appraised like any other gem; but she thinks differently after watching him wander from the camp with one in hand, then return some time later with hollow eyes and slumped shoulders, a weight on him that belies his handful of years. She knows what he is searching for then, and knows he won't find it in Siren or Cait Sith, or even Kirin. Siren cannot sing the souls of the lost back to shore, nor can Cait Sith plunder them from the underworld; and Kirin's light can only heal the living. He will have to look further afield for that magic.

Cyan spends the least time of all with the Espers, handing his own Magicite back to the party after just one day. _Demonic_ , he calls it, _unnatural_ , and she gives him her trademark icy glare and wonders if he thinks at all.

"Shiny stone... friend," Gau says to her one evening, pressing Kirin close to his heart, and a smile tugs at her lips without permission. "Friend talk, friend tell where to fix hurt. Friend show land where everything green." Tears run down his grimy cheeks, and her heart clenches, remembering the lands her own Esper told her of. "Beautiful, beautiful." She thinks more fondly of Gau after that.

Edgar is a good man, ever genteel despite the impression he gives off. He styles himself a womaniser, but she sees beneath the surface to the fact that he never pushes, never asks more of anyone than they can give. It's an act, a veneer of flippancy over a sharp and mechanical mind, to keep people from knowing how much he knows. Yet that mind, she knows, also divides things into two clear categories: people and tools. With the former, he is gracious, respectful. With the latter, he is simply perfunctory; he maintains them well, is not careless, but values them only for what they can do for him. The Magicite, she can tell, is a tool to him, nothing more. It disappoints her.

Shadow speaks little to her, or to anyone, and never shows his face; she can only guess at his intentions from the motions his body makes. Typically, she's good at that. But with the Magicite, Shadow is very still and quiet, even moreso than usual. She's not sure if it's that he's afraid, or that he holds a corpse, or that he feels something from the stone's trembling depths. He never tells.

Interceptor, though, always curls up with Shadow's Magicite at night, and seems to dream of running.

And Terra... Terra is lost, until they bring Maduin back to her, and then she clutches the warm dark crystal to her chest and whispers _Father,_ and no one else says anything. What she is feeling, what she is knowing, is too great for them to guess at. Even Celes.

But she watches Terra hold it like she was holding a father's hand, and she understands that much, at least.


End file.
